


All Future Places

by Fictropes



Series: 2009 no show Dan [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28369293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fictropes/pseuds/Fictropes
Summary: “Just— thinking, you know?”“I don’t know, never had a thought in my life.”
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: 2009 no show Dan [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944535
Comments: 13
Kudos: 89





	All Future Places

**Author's Note:**

> a lovely person left very big and nice comments on every chapter of the original fic and it made me realise..... MISSSED These dudes
> 
> this probs won't make sense without reading the main fic!

_October 20, 2022_

It’s been a while—an awful long time— a whole 13 years of knowing each other. And even though Phil likes to act stupid about it, say those ten years don’t count, Dan knows that they do. That they both think about all the missed time, all the where would they be now. 

So Dan goes a bit overboard when it rolls around, likes to celebrate more than what’s necessary just to make up for the all the missed Octobers. He desperately needs Phil to know he regrets it, the not showing up, the complete lack of anything—the silence. Needs him to know that this is properly it for him, never stopped being it for him even when they didn’t exist in each other’s lives. 

“Hey, whatcha doing?” 

Phil asks, creeps up on him—has a habit of doing that even though he's got the foot steps of a fucking elephant. He slams up the stairs too loudly, thuds down the hall at three am for a piss, kicks the coffee table every time he stands up, but he still manages to catch Dan off guard at least once a week. 

Maybe he’ll never stop being surprised, maybe it’s just all to do with the fact he can’t believe Phil is actually in his life—properly. He could run full pelt with warning into Dan, and Dan would still be surprised because it’s Phil.

This time it’s a light little _woah_ , a hand to the heart, a— “Fucking hell, it’s too early for a heart attack.” 

“Sorry.” Phil says, not sounding sorry at all. In fact he sounds the opposite of sorry, is actually a little smug about the fact he’s managed to keep his weekly record of scaring Dan up. 

“Are not.” 

“Mhm, who knows? I’ll never tell.” 

Phil wraps around Dan where he’s stood, rests his head right between Dan’s shoulder blades. It’s comfortable, it’s their thing, it’s seeing the one you love stood cleaning the dishes and thinking oh— _I need to go and be with them._

“Happy anniversary, stupid.” 

“How many years now?” 

“Thirteen.” 

Phil bites, like he usually does. A retaliation for the ten lost years, but after that he gives into the thirteen pretty quickly. “No. Shutup. That’s so many.” 

“We’re old, mate.” 

Another bite, another set of teeth marks—another damp patch of t-shirt. 

“Stop calling me mate” Phil whines, butts his head against Dan’s back—constantly does all these stupid little things that Dan is so fond of. “We are lovers.”

“Stop calling us lovers, we are fuckers.” 

Phil just—pinches. That’s new, a new thing to be obsessed with. “We are in love and fucking, so… fuck… ers.” Phil pauses, briefly. “Oh, shutup.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Dan protests, turns in Phil’s clutches so he can cup his face with soapy hands—kiss him until he stops thinking about words. “Nothing.”

  
  
“Stop doing that, kissing me as distraction… evil.” But Phil leans in again anyway, has Dan basically in the sink before he stops.

“You trying to bathe me?”

“If that’s what you want.” Phil smiles, and all up close like this it’s a lot—having all that happiness directed at you. “Do you think we could ever actually have a bath together?”

And that’s how it begins, Dan’s reveal—Dan’s admission of what he’s been spending all night looking at on google. It’d started innocently enough, looking at others peoples decor, then looking at other peoples house, then ending up on rightmove looking at potential _them_ houses.

He’s got a few bookmarked, a few that have sold and he wishes hadn’t, a few that are in stupid places that neither of them would actually ever want to move to. And then he has one, one in a special folder that he keeps checking up on—one that he might’ve walked past a few times. Dan’s never explicitly shown Phil, but he might’ve tugged on his sleeve and pointed it out. 

“Where have you gone?” Phil asks, gentle fingers tapping against the side of his head—trying to get him out of it.

“Oh.” Dan murmurs, sheepishly. “Just— thinking, you know?”

  
  
“I don’t know, never had a thought in my life.” 

And this is probably why Dan is properly in love with him, he has the ability to take away all the tense and replace it with something that makes Dan feel lighter—like he’s capable of anything. 

“I don’t know.” Dan shrugs, pushes them away from the sink, forces them into an awkward little stepping situation all the way in the living room. “Think you’ve thought about me a lot, think you like thinking about me.”

“I do, yeah.”

“Yeah?” Dan’s tongue darts out, wetting his lips—ready for wherever this is about to go. “What’d you think about?”

“About—“ Phil leans in, presses a soft kiss to where Dan’s rosy patch would be, “how you abandoned me.”

  
  
“Phil!” Dan whines, because he’d been trying to set a mood—trying to set up some raunchy time on the sofa. “You’re a dickhead.” 

“And we can’t fuck right now because i’m expecting a parcel between, like, ten and eleven.”

“Am I getting cockblocked by amazon?” 

“Yeah, capitalism says no time for pleasure, right? That’s the saying.”

-

“Well now you’re up to something.” Phil joins him on the sofa, after he’s finished messing about with whatever his parcel was. Dan left him to it, has seen too many weird things coming out of boxes since he moved in. He’s gotten over hoping everything is a gift for him, because it never is. It’s always fucking—worms, mushrooms, grass feet. 

“How am I?” Dan tips, tips until Phil has no choice but to lift his arm up and accept Dan’s—not quite—embrace. 

He’s been scrolling, looking at more houses. Some are wildly expensive, have pools and acres of land—one has has a fucking free horse included. He thinks that wouldn’t suit them, though, something that’s expensive just for the sake of being expensive. They’re more about their home comforts, about filling all the empty spaces with memories, with things picked up through the years that show just how much they exist in each others lives. 

Empty hallways, echoing marble, sixteen bathrooms and a kitchen made of nothing but eery white surfaces doesn't sound very them.

“You haven’t spoken for ages, that’s always weird. You love the sound of your own voice.” 

“Since when has our anniversary been bully Dan day?” Dan asks, wriggles until he’s comfortable, until Phil is swearing at him for accidentally elbowing him in the dick. 

“It’s like you don’t _want_ to have my babies.” 

“Yeah, Phil, that’s it.” Dan agrees. “I think you’d be well annoyed if I got the m-preg fantasy.”

“I have literal birthing hips, Dan, I think it’d—you have to let me have the baby.” 

“I’ll let you have the baby.” Dan laughs, and then he keeps laughing when Phil properly cheers—like this is all real as opposed to just hypothetical. 

He thinks that’s another reason why he’s in love. Phil makes him laugh, more than anyone else one earth. 

“What’ve you been doing on there all morning?” Phil asks, inclining his head towards the laptop which lays open on twitter—all tabs to do with potential mortgages shut. 

They really should talk about this, about how Phil gave Dan a key two years ago for all _future places_ , about how Dan took that very literally. About how he’s been thinking of a proper place, about having an actual garden for Dog Dan to be a little menace in. It occupies a lot of his brain, the domesticity of going out and picking out paint colours together, cutlery, sofa cushions. Bedding for Dan to ruin when he says he’s not going to come yet, but then immediately does. 

“You know, just dicking around.” Dan says instead. 

“Mhm.” Phil hums, reaches out to slam the laptop shut. “Anyway, what were we doing before Amazon got here?”

-

“Well, fuck.” Dan thinks he’s breathing too hard, or not breathing at all—he can’t tell. He’s just very aware of his own heartbeat, very aware of Phil being all smug behind him. “Do the covers on the sofa come off… or?”

“I feel like we should just buy a new sofa for the new place.” 

And now Dan’s heart is going wild for an entirely different reason. He goes for stupid, thinks it’ll work best, that Phil will take pity on him and drop the entire thing. 

“New place?” He asks, goes for casual as he moves into a sitting position—trying to avoid landing arse first in his own come. It’s odd to have this conversation naked, he’d always imagined it as serious—sat at the kitchen table with breakfast, with big newspapers open, playing the game of proper adults. 

“Yeah, that one you keep looking at on your laptop. Or the one you keep looking longingly at whenever we walk past it, that one.” Phil is doing casual well, and Dan’s jealous. Dan’s jealous because he can see the red that extends all the way down his chest, showing him up. 

“Huh?”

“Oh, come off it.” Phil snorts, chucks a pillow at him for shenanigan purposes, but honestly Dan is just grateful he has something to cover his dick up with. 

“I—“ Dan sighs, know he’s already lost because Phil definitely knows everything about… everything. “how?”

“I do literally sleep beside you every night, you know? I do have eyes that I can use to see your laptop screen when you’re sat right next to me.” Phil doesn’t sound—angry, or anything. Just fond, amused, smiling at Dan like he always smiles at him. Nothing is different, nothing has changed, the floor hasn't fallen out from under them like Dan had imagined. 

And Dan suddenly wonders why he’d ever thought that in the first place. Phil has been nothing but patient, gentle, kind with him about everything. If Dan had wanted this conversation he could’ve had it, and nothing would’ve changed because they’re _them._

“What do you think about it?” Dan asks, quietly. Scared now for a different reason, scared that Phil will hate it. 

“It’s nice, yeah.” 

“Yeah?”

  
  
“Yeah.” Phil moves the cushion out of the way, so he can lower Dan back down, kiss him in a way that isn’t intended to lead to anything. Kiss him just because he loves him, because they can’t imagine a life where they can’t just—do this.

It’s a soft, sweet kiss of convincing. Tells Dan everything he needs to know. 

_Yeah, I like the place._

_Yeah, I like the place with us inside it._

“I didn’t mean to get so carried away, pick a house without you.”

“We can go properly see it, if you want.” Phil pulls back for a second, leans in in a different way—just to press his lips against Dan’s forehead. “Take the other Dan, make sure he approves of the garden.”

Dog Dan is currently very content in the bedroom, thought getting locked in there, instead of out of there, for once was a treat. 

“I’ve been thinking about it for so long.” Dan admits, spread his legs so Phil can properly slot between them— has a feeling this a long type of conversation. “Ever since you did your whole speech about all future places.”

“Two years? Damn, you really have it bad for me.” Phil laughs, and it calms Dan down— the familiar. “I like that, though, that you were thinking about us like that. In a forever way.” 

Dan gets now when his eighteen year old self was so infatuated, why he made the decision then and there to fall in love and never fall out of it. Phil is always there, always with the right thing to say to make Dan stop feeling so… out of place, so clumsy, so wrong. 

“Of course in a forever way.”

“Then we go see the house, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Dan smiles, reaches up to fix Phil’s quiff— this constant need to be touching in some way. “But you have to promise to tell me if you hate. it, want a place we both actually like.” 

He’s quite good at that, Phil. At entertaining all of Dan’s whims, letting Dan do whatever he feels without saying a word. This is too important, though, needs to be a joint decision because it’s where they’re going to make all of their future memories. 

“Promise, Dan.” 

**Author's Note:**

> [Link text](https://fictropes.tumblr.com/post/638695942173949952/all-future-places-just-thinking-you-know-i)
> 
> as always, lemme know ur thoughts ;_;


End file.
